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While I don't feel swarming is exactly an ability like, let's say, Water Manipulation and Summoning, it is one of the most used combat strategies out there, and as such, I feel there should be a way to show that swarming is a thing we should be accounting for. See, Vs Threads typically assume a match-up is 1v1, maybe more if it's standard in a verse (TImon and Pumbaa, Misako and Kyoko, etc). There is, however, lack of accounting for swarms, which is a standard combat strategy for plenty of entities. Let's bring up a few examples...
Africanized Honey Bee (Real World)
Alone, a bee isn't going to do much. A hornet can eat a bee, no problem. As a swarm? Bees can take down creatures such as wasps and some hornets, and a swarm can even take down horses: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thousands-of-bees-attack-texas-couple-kill-horses/
Granted bees use a venom that kills through allergic reactions, but it's still noteworthy considering swarming is a standard combat ability for bees. I used the Africanized Honey Bee because those guys are a better showing for swarming than things like ants and wasps. You know what doesn't use venom to get the job done?
Piranha (Real World)
With piranhas, they are physically stronger, but they still stink alone. A single piranha would only be able to eat a mouse-sized fish called a roach.:
As a school, however, piranhas can eat things significantly larger than them, including capybaras:
Granted a capybara is too pacifistic to warrant any AP ratings, but it is still a fairly bulky creature. Now, what about in fiction? Well...
Pikmin
Now, the thing in Pikmin is swarming opponents with your Pikmin is the core strategy in the series in regards to combat. Alone, it takes a single Blue Pikmin 267 hits to take down a sand wall, and a Pikmin solo would not fare all that well against a 10-C Male Sheargrub and may as well get eaten by one even. At the same time, a swarm of 100 Pikmin can decimate 10-A bosses like the Armored Cannon Beetle, Titan Dweevil, and Plasm Wraith; and can even do noticeable damage to the 9-B Ancient Sirehound:
Just this alone shows that swarming is a viable combat ability to have on the wiki. If not Pikmin, then certainly Silverfish in Minecraft will.
Silverfish (Minecraft)
Okay, so Silverfish. They're the weakest hostile mob in Minecraft, only dealing 1/2 a heart of damage to a player without armor for a single Silverfish. For swarms? Here's me fighting against a swarm of 20 silverfish with full diamond armor and a diamond sword:
I almost freaking died. As it stands, a player with full Diamond or Netherite Armor (they both have the same durability) is 8-B in durability: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/The_Player_(Minecraft)
If a lone silverfish in Minecraft is 9-A, yet a swarm of 20 silverfish can nearly decimate an endgame player, then there's gotta be some reason to account for swarming.
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With those examples out of the way, one has to ask... What do we do with swarming? How does the VBW account for swarming? Here are some proposals I have in mind.:
Ability Page
I am neutral in regards to this one. Mainly saying this because while an ability page is the best way to legitimatize swarming as that means it would allow users to easily tag profiles of characters/entities that typically swarm their opponents; and non-ability stuff like Marksmanship, Martial Arts, and Weapon Mastery have ability pages themselves; at the same time, not only would people feel it would people feel that swarming is just a subset of hivemind, but also there is the possibility that people might think swarming is too "non-ability" of an ability to feature on the wiki. I think the latter is a weird sentiment to have considering swarms can be entire tiers stronger than individuals depending on the medium (Pikmin and the Real World having very noticeable examples). If Swarming does get an ability page, like I said, it'll tag swarming entities much easier.
Subset of Hive Mind
Swarms do act as a sort of hive mind in eusocial insects, at the same time, the only thing I can readily think of where swarming and hive mind are one of the same is the Scornet Maestro from the Pikmin series. Beyond that, people would have qualms with swarms being listed under "hive mind".
Category
Perhaps the easiest route to go is to just add a new category for entities that swarm. No need for anything big to be made, just slap a "Swarming Entities" category at the bottom of profiles and you're good. Problem is, well, who in the wiki is gonna think, "Hmm, let's scroll to the bottom and read all the categories this character is in to see what they can do"?
Standard Tactics Addition
Standard tactics is important for swarmers, but at the same time, making swarms just be a Standard Tactics addition would mean we'd be getting a wave of CRTs for something the wiki doesn't account for, and that's no fun.
Do Armies Count?
That is a valid question for anyone to ask, and frankly, I ain't entirely sure. I think that's a case-by-case basis. In something like Age of Empires or Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, I can certainly see how armies would fall under Swarming, especially since every character in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator has the intelligence of a Jaffa Cake and thinks that dying is basically putting Xs on their eyes and falling over. (Did I mention Staff has, like, no sense of humor? Y'all need to work on that.) I also distinctly remember that a Jedi Master in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars getting decimated by a swarm of Battle Droids. At the same time, it's a little hard to compare a military unit to a swarm of bees. We're a bunch of nimrods on computers, not General Ulysses S. Grant, so I highly doubt we'd have much of a say on how military units work, though.
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That being said, that is about the best I can do this, and believe me, I try to make this type of nonsense as organized as possible so even those who may disagree can at least see where I'm coming from. So yeah, there ya have it.
Africanized Honey Bee (Real World)
Alone, a bee isn't going to do much. A hornet can eat a bee, no problem. As a swarm? Bees can take down creatures such as wasps and some hornets, and a swarm can even take down horses: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thousands-of-bees-attack-texas-couple-kill-horses/
Granted bees use a venom that kills through allergic reactions, but it's still noteworthy considering swarming is a standard combat ability for bees. I used the Africanized Honey Bee because those guys are a better showing for swarming than things like ants and wasps. You know what doesn't use venom to get the job done?
Piranha (Real World)
With piranhas, they are physically stronger, but they still stink alone. A single piranha would only be able to eat a mouse-sized fish called a roach.:
As a school, however, piranhas can eat things significantly larger than them, including capybaras:
Granted a capybara is too pacifistic to warrant any AP ratings, but it is still a fairly bulky creature. Now, what about in fiction? Well...
Pikmin
Now, the thing in Pikmin is swarming opponents with your Pikmin is the core strategy in the series in regards to combat. Alone, it takes a single Blue Pikmin 267 hits to take down a sand wall, and a Pikmin solo would not fare all that well against a 10-C Male Sheargrub and may as well get eaten by one even. At the same time, a swarm of 100 Pikmin can decimate 10-A bosses like the Armored Cannon Beetle, Titan Dweevil, and Plasm Wraith; and can even do noticeable damage to the 9-B Ancient Sirehound:
Just this alone shows that swarming is a viable combat ability to have on the wiki. If not Pikmin, then certainly Silverfish in Minecraft will.
Silverfish (Minecraft)
Okay, so Silverfish. They're the weakest hostile mob in Minecraft, only dealing 1/2 a heart of damage to a player without armor for a single Silverfish. For swarms? Here's me fighting against a swarm of 20 silverfish with full diamond armor and a diamond sword:
I almost freaking died. As it stands, a player with full Diamond or Netherite Armor (they both have the same durability) is 8-B in durability: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/The_Player_(Minecraft)
If a lone silverfish in Minecraft is 9-A, yet a swarm of 20 silverfish can nearly decimate an endgame player, then there's gotta be some reason to account for swarming.
----------
With those examples out of the way, one has to ask... What do we do with swarming? How does the VBW account for swarming? Here are some proposals I have in mind.:
Ability Page
I am neutral in regards to this one. Mainly saying this because while an ability page is the best way to legitimatize swarming as that means it would allow users to easily tag profiles of characters/entities that typically swarm their opponents; and non-ability stuff like Marksmanship, Martial Arts, and Weapon Mastery have ability pages themselves; at the same time, not only would people feel it would people feel that swarming is just a subset of hivemind, but also there is the possibility that people might think swarming is too "non-ability" of an ability to feature on the wiki. I think the latter is a weird sentiment to have considering swarms can be entire tiers stronger than individuals depending on the medium (Pikmin and the Real World having very noticeable examples). If Swarming does get an ability page, like I said, it'll tag swarming entities much easier.
Subset of Hive Mind
Swarms do act as a sort of hive mind in eusocial insects, at the same time, the only thing I can readily think of where swarming and hive mind are one of the same is the Scornet Maestro from the Pikmin series. Beyond that, people would have qualms with swarms being listed under "hive mind".
Category
Perhaps the easiest route to go is to just add a new category for entities that swarm. No need for anything big to be made, just slap a "Swarming Entities" category at the bottom of profiles and you're good. Problem is, well, who in the wiki is gonna think, "Hmm, let's scroll to the bottom and read all the categories this character is in to see what they can do"?
Standard Tactics Addition
Standard tactics is important for swarmers, but at the same time, making swarms just be a Standard Tactics addition would mean we'd be getting a wave of CRTs for something the wiki doesn't account for, and that's no fun.
Do Armies Count?
That is a valid question for anyone to ask, and frankly, I ain't entirely sure. I think that's a case-by-case basis. In something like Age of Empires or Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, I can certainly see how armies would fall under Swarming, especially since every character in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator has the intelligence of a Jaffa Cake and thinks that dying is basically putting Xs on their eyes and falling over. (Did I mention Staff has, like, no sense of humor? Y'all need to work on that.) I also distinctly remember that a Jedi Master in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars getting decimated by a swarm of Battle Droids. At the same time, it's a little hard to compare a military unit to a swarm of bees. We're a bunch of nimrods on computers, not General Ulysses S. Grant, so I highly doubt we'd have much of a say on how military units work, though.
------------
That being said, that is about the best I can do this, and believe me, I try to make this type of nonsense as organized as possible so even those who may disagree can at least see where I'm coming from. So yeah, there ya have it.
